Brooklyn, As Seen From The Elevated Subway Lines

There are few sights as comforting to the homesick Brooklyn native as the borough’s skyline whizzing by as you sit aboard an elevated subway, looking down on your domain. Yet, despite the sense of place it delivers, it’s not an often celebrated view, perhaps easily taken for granted.

Sheepshead Bay

Bensonhurst native Dave Mandl gets it. So he took to borough’s many elevated subway lines recently, and captured some of the stunning, purely Brooklyn views it affords – even through its mucked-up windows.

One day this past February, with the city blanketed in snow and illuminated by amazing winter light, I decided to toss my perfectionism aside for a month and make a virtue of necessity, shooting a series of warts-and-all landscape photos from Brooklyn’s elevated subway lines — called, naturally, Elevated Landscapes. Since there’s no other way to capture these particular shots, aside from possibly renting a helicopter, it seemed a shame to let them get away.

Sheepshead Bay

Although there are many shots of Brownsville, Gowanus and Bushwick, Mandl paid a solid amount of attention to capturing Southern Brooklyn, including Sheepshead Bay, Bensonhurst, Coney Island and Borough Park.